


flying through the streets, with the people underneath

by dirtybinary



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 21:18:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5513636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtybinary/pseuds/dirtybinary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>The Soldier tosses his Skorpion in the air, catches it (left hand), and aims it at the slight crease between the archer’s dusty-blond brows. “Are you here to stop me?”</p>
  <p>Save for a minute tensing of his back and shoulders, Barton does not react to the gun. “I dunno, man,” he says. “Depends what you’re gonna do.”</p>
</blockquote>After the helicarriers, the Winter Soldier tries to complete his last mission, but finds it a lot harder than he expected.
            </blockquote>





	flying through the streets, with the people underneath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KingBarnes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KingBarnes/gifts).



i.

The tremor starts the day after the river. After the helicarriers, and the blond man, and the hard reset to factory defaults.

The Soldier sits all night in the soundproofed basement of a disused Hydra depot, staring at his uncooperative fingers. Guns do not seem to sit correctly in them any more. He passes his Skorpion from hand to hand, taking aim at an imaginary target on the far wall. Left hand: steady, unyielding metal. Bang. Bullseye. Right hand: trembling flesh, synapses smouldering with unwieldy muscle memory. Bang. Miss.

He studies the bullet hole. Just a hair away from true centre, an almost imperceptible defect, a lethal discrepancy. Enough for mission failure. Enough for punishment. One could learn to compensate for it, if one tried hard enough.

But he has no orders, and no one comes for him. A full forty-eight hours pass before he works out why. The mission is incomplete. Target Level 6-01-SGR still draws breath.

A crucial oversight, but easily rectifiable. In theory, no one ever needs to know about his fit of wilful disobedience on the riverbank.

He passes the gun back to his left hand. Bang, bang, bang.

 

ii.

Level 6-01-SGR’s jogging route at the Mall is circuitous and predictable, taking him through many secluded areas fertile for ambush. The Soldier encamps on the roof of an old tool shed, probably used by the park wardens and no one else, which the target passes with eerie regularity every 11.25 minutes. An easy shot. (He even seems to slow down when he gets within sight of the shed, but that’s probably just the Soldier’s imagination. Why would anyone do that?)

Lying flat on the roof, the Soldier spends 10.5 minutes of every lap squinting along the barrel of his gun. His sniper’s eye can see, plain as day, the trajectory his fatal bullet will take. He plots it out with both hands. Right hand, bang, miss. His flesh fingers are trembling worse than before. It will have to be the metal one, then. Left hand, bang, dead.

He spends the remaining 0.75 minute frozen, because that is when the ruffled golden head comes into view, and all the demons and all the echoes in the Soldier’s mind go still and reverent.

Left hand, right hand, bang, bang, bang.

“You should probably get that checked out,” says the man who joins him on the roof at some point in the target’s eleventh lap. The Soldier does not recall having heard him come up, a lapse of vigilance that would be alarming on any other day. This morning, when he is about to shoot 6-01-SGR, nothing seems to matter very much. “The tremor,” explains the man, when the Soldier just stares at him. “Could ruin a sharpshooter’s career. Or get you killed.”

The Soldier continues to stare. The newcomer is vaguely familiar, all exposed bicep and forearms ropy with muscle, a bow in his hands and a sheaf of arrows slung across his back. On the path below, the target passes the shed for the twelfth time. He slows to a jog, glances at the shed with all the furtive anxiety of a shoplifter checking for surveillance cameras, and speeds off again.

“Barton,” says the archer at last. With a curiously self-deprecating shrug, he adds, “Hawkeye.”

“Avenger.” The Soldier’s voice is raspy and hoarse, the scrape of old machinery.

“Yeah. That.”

More silence. Barton scoots on hands and knees to the edge of the roof, glancing down at the path below. The target is out of sight. The Soldier tosses his Skorpion in the air, catches it (left hand), and aims it at the slight crease between the archer’s dusty-blond brows. “Are you here to stop me?”

Save for a minute tensing of his back and shoulders, Barton does not react to the gun. “I dunno, man,” he says. “Depends what you’re gonna do.”

“I,” says the Soldier, drawing out the pronoun, feeling out its shape and weight on his tongue, “am going to shoot that man.”

Again, that carefully careless shrug. “Nat said you wouldn’t.”

Nat. Natasha. 6-02-NAR. “I shot her.”

“Yeah,” says Barton. “If you were anybody else, I’d have to kick your ass for that. But happens I know a thing or two about accidentally hurting the people you love.”

None of this makes any sense. The Soldier’s metal finger curls around the trigger. With this hand, at such close range, there is no question of missing. “You don’t know shit,” says the Soldier. He allows himself to indulge in the vulgar colloquialism. It seems like a special occasion, the kind of day when people break out the champagne or bow their heads together in moments of silence, simply to mark that something of import has occurred. “She doesn’t know shit.”

“Maybe.” Barton produces a boyish, lopsided grin. “But neither do you.”

One can’t argue with that.

 

iii.

The flying man, now wingless, huffs and puffs his way past the shed. Unlike the target, he speeds up when he passes them, just a little, like an involuntary instinct of self-preservation. The Soldier approves. (He does not fire, either at the flying not-flying man or at Barton--only because neither of them is the mission, he tells himself, and the noise of the shot would give his position away.)

“Here’s Cap,” Barton says, peering down at the path. He gives a low whistle of appreciation, too soft to catch from below. “Looks like his last lap. He’s sweating buckets.”

Lap thirteen. The Soldier cocks his gun. Again, he sees the trajectory: left hand, bang, mission complete. Return to base, wipe, repeat.

Barton gets up. “I should probably add,” he says, “that if you shoot him, I shoot you.”

The Soldier lifts an eyebrow. Slowly, deliberately, he flexes his metal arm so that the plates shift and recalibrate. The gun stays in his hand, rock steady while he gets to his feet. “Yeah?”

Barton pulls an arrow from his quiver. He moves a lot faster than the Soldier expected. His voice is also less than friendly when he says, with a slight flick of the head towards the nocked arrow, “Fair warning, bro, this one hurts.”

It seems fair enough. Even a cat can only cheat death eight times, and the Soldier has lived more lives than he can count. He doesn’t understand why, but there is a certain pathos, a satisfying symmetry, in the idea that 6-01-SGR will be his last mission. A worthwhile end, to be undone by such an enemy.

“Hey,” says Barton, harsh, urgent. A soft swish, a movement at the corner of his eye. The bow is drawn. “Barnes, for God’s sake.”

Barnes. Fire and water and a pair of honest, earnest blue eyes. _Your name is--_

“Bucky,” says Barton. “You don’t wanna do this.”

He doesn’t, not really.

He has a clear shot. The flying man is well out of sight, and there are no other joggers on the path. No one to help. No one to hurt, except this gnatlike shadow at his side. A good a time as any.

At the last moment, he moves the gun to his right hand. Tremble. Trigger. Bang.

For the span of a breath, everything stops in its tracks. Barton freezes, arrow aimed at the Soldier’s heart, hands motionless on the bowstring. The target stops jogging. The Soldier stops breathing. The bullet flies just a hair too high, whistling past the target’s ear and thudding into the bole of a sturdy oak tree just beyond him. He missed. He never misses. The target glances up to the roof of the shed, where--standing up--Barton and the Soldier are no longer concealed. His eyes find Barnes’s, and hold them. He appraises Barnes’s face for a long moment, not moving, not speaking. Then, for some inexplicable reason, he breaks into a smile like the dawn, and waves.

The Soldier lets out a long breath. With his unsteady hand, he puts the gun down and kicks it over to Barton. It has served its purpose.

“Right,” says Barton. Even his bow sounds relieved when he pulls the arrow free and releases his hold on the string. “Y’all go make out or something. I’m gonna get coffee.”

He starts to walk away. Steve has vanished from view, presumably on his way up to the roof of the shed. “Wait,” Barnes says. “The gun.”

Barton glances down at the Skorpion on the floor, and then back up at Barnes. “Nah. Keep it. I trust you with him.”

Light, rapid footfalls are coming up the stairs. Barnes furrows his brow. “Because I missed?”

“Because you meant to miss,” says Barton.

He pulls himself over the edge of the roof and drops out of sight, bow and all. The next moment, the stairwell door opens, and Steve emerges empty-handed and sweaty on the roof. He has no weapon save for a watery smile, and that old name. “Buck?”

“Yeah,” says Barnes, after a long pause. His hand is shaking wildly and his heart is attempting some advanced gymnastics and he cannot find it in himself to care. “Yeah, Steve, s’me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Jimae](http://kingbuckybarnes.co.vu) for a Marvel Secret Santa exchange! Go check out her blog, she's amazing.
> 
> Title is from Halsey's _Young God_.
> 
> I'm [dirtybinary](http://dirtybinary.tumblr.com) on tumblr. Come say hi!


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